ABSTRACT
You cannot observe people rummaging through their memory, but we claim that to trace cognitive processes it is worthwhile to analyze non-verbal overt behaviour that indicates what information individuals search for. Imagine a salesperson watching a client picking up a brochure about a certain product, say, a washing machine. The salesperson quite reasonably assumes that the client is searching information about this product. Later at home, when trying to remember product details from the brochure, it is likely that the client turns toward the brochure again to look up information. Now, if looking up is not possible, because the client’s spouse is flipping through the brochure while the two decide which machine to buy, the client trying to remember product details is still more likely to look towards the momentarily inaccessible brochure than toward other brochures within sight. In the laboratory, we can create situations in which orienting toward one or the other source of information about decision alternatives is equally easy. Then, people’s orienting behaviour can indicate which information they are searching for at each moment. Orienting towards information sources occurs even if people search for the necessary information in memory and are aware that it is not accessible from the original source (Richardson & Spivey, 2000). This affords a method for tracking memory search: Gaze behaviour can indicate information sought in memory, because the eyes are likely to return to the location in the environment where the to be remembered information has been previously acquired. This has been shown for deliberate memory search. But even intuitive decision making involving automatic memory activation may be accompanied by orienting towards sources of remembered information that are present in the environment.
